1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns a glass plate fabrication machine suitable to small lot production for wide variety of articles such as window glass of automobiles, for example, side windows, front windows, rear windows and rear quarters.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The machine is of course applicable to the edge grinding for table top glass articles placed on table and other modified glass plates, not restricted only to glass plates for use in automobile. This invention also relates to a glass plate fabrication machine so adapted that fabrication and transportation of glass plates may be conducted based on numerical control systems.
More specifically, this invention concerns a glass plate fabrication machine capable of carrying out the fabrication including cutting, cracking and grinding finishing of a raw glass plates in a continuous step of flow by means of at least a numerical control device in one machine.
The fabrication machine comprises a cutting station for cutting a raw glass plates based on numerical information, a grinding station for grinding the cut edges of the glass plate, a cracking station disposed between the cutting station and the grinding station for cracking the glass plate finished with cutting (glass plate applied with score-cutting) along with the score-cutting line and a glass conveying station for sequentially transporting glass plates to the cutting, cracking, grinding and further to discharging stations.
In this fabrication machine, the cutting station and the grinding station are connected by means of a common moving mechanism to interlock the operations of the respective stations and, in the course where the cutting and the grinding are conducted in parallel, cracking for the glass plate to be transported to the grinding station at the next operation cycle is carried out in the cracking station.
In the prior art, cutting, cracking and grinding of glass plates have been carried out quite independently from each other by separate devices.
In the automatic line, these devices are connected to a plurality of conveyor devices or glass reversing machines.
In view of the above, the length of the fabrication line is increased and the electrical control system for the automatic operation of the respective devices is complicated.
Particularly, since accurate positioning is required every time the glass plate is supplied to the glass plate cutting device, the cracking device and the grinding device, the structure of each of the devices is complicated. Further, since the fabrication speeds are different from each of the devices, an additional device such as a stocker is necessary for temporarily storing the glass plates. Furthermore, since the fabrication lines are lengthy and complicated, troublesome procedures are required when the kind of glass articles to be fabricated is changed.
This invention has been accomplished for overcoming the foregoing drawbacks in the prior art.
Specifically, it is an object of this invention to provide a glass plate fabrication machine capable of conducting the fabrication of a glass plate from cutting to grinding in one compact machine, so that the working steps including the cutting, grinding, feeding and positioning can be conducted by at least a numerical control device.
It is another object of this invention to provide a glass plate fabrication machine capable of easily coping with the change of kind of glass articles to be worked.